New treatment for angina sufferers
You're stopped in your tracks by a squeezing or burning feeling in your chest. The pain radiates to your left arm, neck or jaw. Your knuckles turn white as you grab your chest. You feel a tingling sensation in your shoulders, arms or wrists. Although alarming, it's a feeling you've felt before. It happens every time you climb the stairs, carry groceries or exercise. At times it's triggered by anger or stress.
These experiences are all too common for the 6.5 million people living with angina. While some are helped with angioplasty, stents, bypass surgery or medications such as nitroglycerin, there remain a number of people who just aren't eligible for these treatments. But, now there's a treatment called Enhanced External Counterpulsation (EECP) that promises relief. EECP is a noninvasive therapy that has been proven to reduce or prevent angina attacks in most patients.
"Eighty percent of the people who go through EECP report less angina after their first course of treatment, and 75 percent of patients who experience relief sustain it after three years," says Walter Klodnicki, MD, board-certified cardiologist and medical director of Virtua's new EECP program.
EECP at work
Normal heart function depends on maintaining a balance between the oxygen the heart needs and the oxygen it gets. Blocked arteries and other forms of heart disease disrupt this balance and cause the symptoms known as angina.
Dr. Klodnicki explains that EECP helps restore the balance by delivering oxygen-rich blood from the legs to the heart at the precise moment the heart is resting. This is when the heart naturally gets 80% of its oxygen-rich blood supply.
A painless, outpatient procedure
EECP is a painless, outpatient procedure that involves wrapping a set of cuffs, similar to blood pressure cuffs, around the patient's calves, thighs and buttocks. Air hoses inflate and deflate the cuffs. Patients experience a wave of pressure moving upward from the calves to the buttocks. This is followed by a rapid release of the pressure. Trained technicians use an electrocardiogram to synchronize the treatments with the patient's heartbeat.
James O'Neil, MD, board-certified cardiologist at Virtua Memorial Hospital explains why EECP works: "Studies have shown that EECP treatments may form a natural bypass around blocked arteries. The increased blood flow encourages new tiny blood vessels to form around the blockage. Tests show that EECP patients also have an increase in a hormone that has been proven to signal vessel growth."
To learn more
For information on Virtua's new EECP program, to find a cardiologist or obtain a free fact sheet with detailed information about EECP treatment, call 1-888-Virtua-3 (1-888-847-8823).